Where You'll Find Me Now
by c. sherwood
Summary: It's nice. When they have lunch, they don't talk about work. CHASE/WILSON, CHASE/CAMERON.


I. . .uhm. . .started writing this for Raka's 17th birthday.

Happy 18th birthday, Raka. I should have made it more porny.

**Title:** where you'll find me now

**Rating: **PG13

**Fandom: **_House, M.D._

**Pairing:** Chase/Wilson (necessary Chase/Cameron)

**Warnings:** slash, angst, vague sexual encounters

**Summary: **when they have lunch, they don't talk about work.

**Notes: **taking Chase's timeline from right before S1 until about the time he starts having casual sex with Cameron, and then attempting to viably shove a relationship with Wilson into it. A big gap between S2 and "Insensitive" (S3EP14).

It starts like this: Chase an emotional wreck, two weeks into his new job and he still feels like he is playing doctor, wearing a lab coat a size too big. He talks to Wilson when things get bad, and the older man tells him how to not murder House in any given situation.

It's nice. When they have lunch, they don't talk about work.

/

"Cameron seems nice." Wilson says, gingerly, and Chase nods, worrying his pasta with a plastic fork. They are sitting at the same table they always sit at, when Wilson doesn't eat with House and he doesn't eat with the other two, the one in the very back.

"House is going to tear her apart." he murmurs, and Wilson laughs and laughs.

/

Wilson spends Christmas morning with House, instead of his wife.

Chase spends Christmas morning sitting on his bed, legs crossed, staring at a line of cards spread across the sheets. One from Cameron, one from his father, one from Wilson, all placed neatly in a row.

Cameron's is signed with a heart, but he knows that it isn't for him, that she has signed everything that way since she was fifteen.

His father's doesn't say anything, just has a check in the envelope and a winter scene on the front that he doesn't recognize from holidays back home.

Wilson's is plain, but it says something inside that he might want to remember later, that he could actually imagine keeping: _I don't know what to get people for Christmas, but sometimes I think that all people need is the idea that someone was worrying about what to get them for Christmas, not because they felt they needed to but because they __wanted__ to._

_I worried._

/

After Cameron quits, Wilson leads Chase to his car without a word, and they go to the first bar they can find. Chase gets drunk, and Wilson gets mostly drunk, and he is the first person that he says anything to.

"I didn't want to hurt anyone." he says, in the parking lot, later. The streetlights bounce off the wet pavement and puddle at his feet. He looks up at Wilson. "But this job is all I have now, and I was scared. I was really scared."

"I know." Wilson replies, leaning next to him against the car, their legs brushing.

"I wish it hadn't happened this way."

"I know." Wilson says again, smiling a little this time, like forgiveness (like repenting, dark rooms and whispering, _God forgive me_) and Chase believes him.

/

Chase wants to believe that his father didn't tell him about the cancer because he didn't want him to worry, that Wilson didn't tell him out of some sense of protection, but he can't help but feel betrayed.

If he wasn't there while he was healthy, the least he could was tell him when he was dying.

/

Sex with Cameron is, like a lot of things lately, a mistake.

Neither of them know what to do with each other, and she's so high that she isn't even considering how this could end, so he lets this new, scary Cameron take the lead. Her weight on top of him is slight, but she keeps him down, sliding down until he is inside of her and choking, hands gripping the sheets.

She doesn't say anything until it's over, until she pulls away from him and lets out a shaky sigh, eyes bright in the darkness.

"You should probably go now."

/

After his father dies, he learns that nobody ever taught him how to mourn, so he doesn't. He shuts off for a few days before going back to the day to day processes like nothing had happened.

Cameron tries to get him to talk.

House, for once, doesn't say anything at all.

Wilson stays late to catch him on his way home, and invites him to sleep in his guestroom while his wife's away with her sister, if he's having a hard time. _I don't want to be alone_, he thinks, _but I can't let myself get used to anything else_. He says no and goes to sleep alone that night, but he can't help but dwell on the cautious, quiet tone of Wilson's voice, the look in his eyes when he walked away.

/

His work is his life. When they don't have a case, he takes over extra clinic hours because he doesn't want to go home. The cursory smile-and-nod works better on patients than the girls he used to date, once they got past his hair and his eyes and figured out that he really wasn't much of anything.

When House goes home, Wilson forces him out of the clinic and hands him a cup of coffee.

"What are you trying to do?" he asks, and Chase pretends that he doesn't know what he's talking about. The coffee tastes bitter, hot in the back of his throat, but that's the way he likes it. He never takes sugar.

_I don't know, _he thinks, calmly. _I really don't know._

/

"I don't know where my wife goes, sometimes." This time, it was Wilson looking for him, Chase taking him out to dinner. They sit in the corner booth and drink soda out of straws, and it helps, a little, like they aren't quite so adult.

Wilson folds his hands on the table and smiles, thinly.

"Sometimes," he repeats, looking straight at Chase, "she doesn't come home at all."

Later that night, Wilson is getting into his car to leave for an empty house, and Chase grabs his arm and kisses him, once. Their faces linger close for a moment before soft lips brush the corner of Chase's mouth, and Wilson quietly shuts the door.

/

When Wilson leaves his wife, he goes to House, and Chase doesn't know what to think about that. They don't even talk, for more than a week (_eight days, four hours_, he thinks, without even realizing it), until Wilson catches him coming out of the hospital.

"Coffee?" he asks, weakly, and Chase stares down at him. He never realized that he was taller, but he can feel it now.

"Where's House?" he asks.

"_Chase_." Dark eyes move towards the glass doors, then he is being pulled into the parking lot, and he gets into Wilson's car without getting asked. They don't say anything, and, this time, Wilson kisses him.

"God." Chase murmurs, into his mouth. The sun is filtering through the windows, and anyone could be watching, but he can't bring himself to care. He runs a hand down Wilson's arm to grab hold of his wrist, pulling him closer.

"I don't. . ." Wilson gasps, "I don't even know where you live."

"I'll show you."

/

No one from the hospital has ever been in his apartment.

They make it halfway into the living room, the door slamming somewhere behind them, before Chase's shirt slides to the floor and he lets himself be pushed into the back of an armchair.

"Fuck, fuck, _fuck_." he pants, a desperate rhythm to their movements, to both of their fingers fumbling on buttons and zippers, to hot breath and teeth on his neck. Long fingers tangle in his hair, big palms against his head, and Wilson stops, breathing hard.

"Are you sure?" he asks, ever patiently, and Chase presses his lips to the pulse in his neck, and he knows that's answer enough. He pushes his hips forward to try to make Wilson gasp again, and he does.

/

As a rule, Chase doesn't get involved with people he works with (he refuses to think of what happened with Cameron as anything other than sex, not even Sex, just. . .sex). Actually, Chase doesn't really get involved with people at all. He has drinks, sometimes, but he always goes home buzzed and alone. It's easier that way.

He doesn't know if what's happening between Wilson and him would be considered involved. They're basically the same as they were before, just with more orgasms.

And when they pass each other, sometimes, Chase can't stop smiling until House asks him why, and he has to make up some excuse about a television program he saw the night before. Surely that doesn't mean anything, though.

/

They manage the secretive part of the business fairly well, which probably has something to do with Wilson having a knack for impossibly intricate plans and Chase being able to hide in small places for large amounts of time, a skill he learned from playing hide-and-seek with his mother, who always forgot her part of the game.

They have skipped lunch to make up for lost time, sitting on the edge of Wilson's desk in a close to inappropriate state, when they hear the distinct _tap tap tap _of a cane outside the door.

"Shit." Chase murmurs, more out of annoyance than fear as he slips down under the desk, curling his legs against his chest as House slams inside.

"Chase is AWOL." he declares. "What would the Queen say?"

"Considering he's Australian?" Wilson starts, cautiously. "And have you tried banning lunch again, because I'm sure he's just hiding from you under a cafeteria table like any sane person would."

"_Cameron_ was there to care for our seizing patient." House replies. "And Foreman was there to make useless suggestions and look dramatic."

"I said sane people."

"Well, Cameron obviously has some maternal Freudian issues that she's suppressing." House admits. There is a slight groan and a shifting noise as he sits down, and Chase bites back a sigh. He's going to be here awhile. "And, as I'm sure you've heard, Foreman has a history of being a klepto."

He amuses himself for the hour that follows by untying Wilson's shoes and inventing undoable knots, and then seeing how far he can get his hand before the other man shifts away, preserving his dignity. It's probably more fun than treating a seizing patient, even if it lasts two hours and ends with a neck cramp.

/

Chase's knowledge of domesticity is entirely from sitcom reruns and women's magazines in the hospital waiting room, but, if he had to guess, he would say that this is it. Wilson has a toothbrush in his tiny bathroom and clothes left scattered on his floor. His body has started to leave an imprint on the mattress. Sometimes, they don't even have sex at all, and they kiss in that quiet, normal way that couples do before he leaves to sneak back to House's couch.

He sort of wants to ask him to stay, but he knows that they can't go further than this. Because _House_ would find out, and he's pretty sure that if House finds out, that the world they've made together out of careful practice will shatter around them.

When he grabs his wrist one night after Wilson has risen from the sheets and murmurs something pleading because he's just a little bit drunk, they both hesitate.

"I want to stay." Wilson says, sadly, earnestly. "You know I want to."

But he doesn't.

/

They fight.

It's completely inexplicable, because they never fought before this, but when you add in everything they are to each other now, you come up with something explosive. One of them will push the other too far and then there's no escaping it, not until Chase throws something or Wilson just leaves.

"We're so stupid." Wilson says, five minutes after he had slammed out his apartment, coming back in to fall next to Chase on the couch and kiss him, once, hard. "What the hell are we doing?"

Chase doesn't know, really, but he doesn't say so. Instead, he pulls Wilson to him and kisses his neck, fingers sliding under his shirt. They don't have to talk about it. Not right now, at least, with moonlight streaming through his blinds and making shadows spring up all over their pale skin.

/

It's Valentine's Day, and Chase has been working all night, and Wilson is having breakfast with House. Which shouldn't mean anything, but it does.

"So I'm thinking we should have sex." Cameron says, and Chase hasn't really been listening, so he blinks at her as she stares guilelessly back. _Uhm_, he thinks, then: _House and Wilson aren't having sex. _

"That makes sense." he says, dryly, but he sort of means it.

/

"It's over, isn't it?" Wilson asks, in the door of his apartment, before Chase can even say hello.

". . .what are you. . ." he starts, then thinks about Cameron, about the janitor's closet and House. "Oh. _Oh_."

"She'll be better for you." Wilson says, voice falsely cheerful. "This could only ever be temporary, anyway. Right?" Chase doesn't want to answer him. That would mean this was actually happening. He shakes and meets him stare for stare before Wilson turns on the spot and walks away, leaving the door open behind him.

Wilson knows all about cheating, but Chase is just starting to understand it.

/

"What's happening with Wilson and you?" House asks, all of a sudden. Chase looks from the file in his hands, startled. Beneath the table, Cameron's foot stops moving against his.

"Nothing." he says, and wishes he was lying.

-fin-


End file.
